An Analysis of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guinn

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4 August 2013
An Analysis of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guinn
In Ursula Le Guinn’s 1974 short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,”a Utopian city which is double faced. While on the surface Omelas appears prosperous on all scores, it has a dark side too. Somewhere in the basement of one of the city’s most beautiful public buildings, a little child is held captive in degrading and inhumane conditions. Its misery is the city’s sacrifice for her prosperity and if anything is done to ameliorate the child’s suffering, “all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed” (6). Young people visit the wretched child and while they get “shocked and sickened at the sight” (5),they find themselves helpless.Some,however,”feel anger and outrage”(5) and walk away from Omelas on to the mountains never to return. Through the author’s adept use of vivid description, symbolism, and contrast the themes of scapegoating, moral responsibility and utilitarianism are exposed.
Vivid description is extensively employed in the first part of the short story to describe the city of Omelas in its glorious self, during the Festival of Summer: “The rigging of the boats in harbor…in the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens…” (1).Also, the description of the citizens of Omelas: “were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians…” (1) is vivid. These descriptions help us to clearly see the citizens of Omelas in their context and precisely their happiness and prosperity before revealing the darkness of the city which is the child itself and its wretchedness inside a room with “one lock...